Jim and I had an unlikely union from the very start. A woman from upstate New York, and a man from the Willamette Valley in central Oregon, who met at Moqui Lodge, a mere mile from the edge of the Grand Canyon.

At first, we didn’t like one another very much. But, one night I treated myself to an extremely overpriced six pack of Guinness (shipping stuff up to the Canyon isn’t cheap!) – and only after the store was closed did I realize that I didn’t have a bottle opener. I went to the common employee areas looking for someone willing to loan me one.

Jim was that someone. He went back to his place to find one – he no longer drank – and, when he brought it over, we talked for four hours.

Less than six months later, we were married. And stayed that way until he died last January, a little over 20 years later.

In many ways, I grew up in this marriage. I was barely 28 when we married. I’m 48 now, and the mother of three children – two thriving teens so close to grown it sometimes blows my mind, and a secondborn son who was profoundly brain injured at birth and died at 12 days old, having spent his entire life in the NICU, most of it in a coma. We became homeowners, and I became voluntarily estranged from my abusive parents.

And now….?

Now, I reimagine my life as a widow – a word that still feels foreign to me. I’ve adopted a dog, and changed my bed, and my bedroom. I’ve removed Jim’s name from our formerly joint accounts, and am contemplating selling and giving away some of his possessions. It will be up to me to replace our leaky roof, and tend to everything else about our older home in need of repairs.

Life goes on, and I’m still here. I need to adjust, reinvent, seek new kinds of joy, and acquire new skills.

Published by shanjeniah

I am myself. I own my life, and live with three other people who own theirs. My intention is to do only those things that bring me joy, and to give myself wholly to those things I do.
Writing has been my passion throughout my life, and this will become the home for my writing life...because it brings me great joy!
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Thank you, Colleen. I’m doing…all right. I prefer to cherish the 20+ years of marriage and communion, rather than the sorrows of the last months. Since the only way available is forward, I intend to do all I can to make that a life to remember and cherish, too, in its own way.